Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the distinction between what is extraordinary and what is ordinary, suggesting that miracles are fantastical while facts are grounded in reality.
Mark Twain uses the imagery of a mermaid and a seal to illustrate the stark contrast between the realms of belief and reality. A mermaid, a mythical creature, symbolizes miracles and the extraordinary, while a seal, a real animal, represents facts and the tangible world. Twain's quote invites us to reflect on our perceptions and the ways in which we categorize events and experiences as either miraculous or factual.
In practice
During a motivational speech about perception and reality.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?
Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.
I was sure that somewhere a grandiose carnival was going on in the sky, and I was missing it.
Probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of legitimate use of force in a territory, might be among the biggest violence reduction techniques ever invented.
I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so.
Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won't work out.
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